Senior Data Engineer

Senior Data Engineer

Collectors is the leading creator of innovative technology that provides value-added services for collectors worldwide. We grade, authenticate, vault, and sell millions of record-setting collectibles, all while modernizing and digitalizing the process to further our mission of helping collectors pursue their passions. We're always on the lookout for talented people to join our growing team.

Our services span collectible trading cards, autographs, comic books, coins, video games, event tickets, and memorabilia. Our subsidiaries include PSA, PCGS, Beckett, SGC, and Card Ladder.

Since our founding in 1986, we have graded and authenticated millions of items. We employ more than 3000 people across our headquarters in Santa Ana, California and offices in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico, Germany, the UK, and France.

We're transforming the collecting experience with technology that brings authentication, grading, and trading into the modern era. Our products are equalizing the playing field by providing tools that make complex research analytics — including pricing, scarcity reports, and historic sales data — accessible to every collector, old or new. Our engineering mission is to democratize technology while promoting innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning throughout the organization.

We're looking for a Senior Data Engineer to help build and scale our data platform. This is a hands-on IC role: you'll design, build, and own the pipelines that move data across the business, contribute to the architecture of the platform, and help create the foundations that our analytics, reporting, and AI agents depend on.

You'll report to the Staff Manager, Data Engineering & Analytics. Remote or hybrid candidates will also be considered. We believe that there is significant value in in-person collaboration. If you live within a 1 hour commuting distance to one of our offices, you will be required to be onsite most of the time. This will be discussed further as part of the recruiting process.

What You'll Do

• Build and own key components of our data platform, spanning ingestion (Hevo, Estuary), our Google BigQuery warehouse, and the dbt transformation layer — delivering systems that are scalable, reliable, and secure.
• Contribute to architecture and technical direction, writing design docs, participating in design reviews, and working closely with senior technical leaders to shape how the platform evolves.
• Design and maintain data ingestion pipelines, building batch and CDC pipelines across a diverse set of sources — operational databases, SaaS applications, and ERP systems — and evaluating tooling options with a clear, well-reasoned perspective.
• Develop end-to-end with AI coding agents. Our teams build with Claude Code and similar tools, and you'll use them daily while helping refine the practices and guardrails that keep AI-assisted engineering fast, safe, and high-quality.
• Improve reliability and observability, implementing testing, monitoring, alerting, and on-call practices so data lands on time, is trusted, and failures are caught before stakeholders notice.
• Implement governance and controls, applying access models, auditability, and operational rigor across the pipelines and datasets you own.
• Help build the foundations for agentic analytics, delivering well-modeled, well-governed data that agents and MCP connections can rely on for trustworthy answers.
• Partner with analytics engineers, analysts, and stakeholders to understand data needs, unblock high-value use cases, and turn business requirements into durable platform capabilities.
• Engineer tooling and services beyond the warehouse — building the APIs, automated jobs, and internal tools in Python that make the platform run smoothly and put data in more people's hands than SQL alone can reach.
• Mentor and support other engineers through thoughtful code review, pairing, and knowledge sharing, helping raise the quality and consistency of the team's work.
• Explore what's next for our warehouse, contributing to hands-on POCs on lakehouse patterns, open table formats, and alternative query engines.

Who You Are

• An experienced data engineer with 5+ years building data platforms and pipelines in production, with a track record of independently owning and delivering complex projects.
• Deeply skilled in the modern data stack. You have strong, hands-on experience with cloud data warehousing (BigQuery or equivalent), dbt, and modern ingestion tooling, and you can weigh the trade-offs of buying versus building.
• A thoughtful designer. You build for scale, failure, and change, and you can clearly explain the trade-offs behind your design decisions, in writing and in person.
• Fluent in AI-assisted development. You have real experience developing with Claude Code or a similar coding agent, and you treat it as a core part of how modern engineering gets done rather than a novelty.
• Reliability-focused. You believe pipelines should be tested, observable, and boring — and you've put the tooling and practices in place to make that true for the systems you've owned.
• Governance-aware. You understand access controls, auditability, and data-quality safeguards, and you apply them in ways that build trust in the numbers without slowing the team down.
• A collaborative teammate. You make the people around you better through code review, knowledge sharing, and mentoring more junior engineers.
• Technically fluent and a clear communicator. You're strong in SQL and Python, comfortable with version control, CI/CD, and testing workflows, and able to explain technical work to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable with cloud infrastructure. You work beyond the data warehouse, managing serverless compute, storage, and secrets on a major cloud platform like GCP or AWS.
• Curious about where the data stack is heading. You follow developments in lakehouse patterns and query engines and enjoy testing new ideas through hands-on work.

Salary Range: The salary range for this position is $135,549 - $220,067. Actual compensation on this range varies based on a variety of non-discriminatory factors, including location, job level, experience, and skill set. This role may be eligible for bonuses, commissions, or other forms of compensation, please ask your recruiter for details.

Reasons To Join Us:

• Health Insurance: All full-time employees are eligible to enroll in Medical, Dental, and Vision
• Additional Benefits: Full-time employees are eligible for fertility, commuter, and educational assistance benefits.
• 401(K) Matching Plan: We are proud to offer a competitive 401k matching plan to our employees to support their future financial goals
• Vacation: All salaried employees are eligible for flexible time-off.
• Holiday Pay: All regular, full-time employees are eligible for ten company paid holidays
• Employee Discounts: Employees receive discounts on select grading services for approved submissions
• Flexible Hours: Many of our teams offer flexible schedules with varying shifts and will work with you to accommodate your needs
• Fun Working Environment: Our team members are invited to participate in celebrations, holiday events, and team building activities
• Additional Resources: Collectors Tech Blog, PSA

Collectors uses e-Verify to validate your ability to work legally in the United States.

We are aware that there are instances where individuals are receiving job offers that fraudulently allege to be from Collectors or one of our business units. This type of fraud can be carried out through false websites, through fake e-mails claiming to be from the company or through social media. We never ask for personal information such as your bank account, Social Security numbers or National IDs, nor do we send or request payments for the purchase of business-related equipment. If you suspect fraud, please reach out to View email address on click.appcast.io.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, national origin, gender, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or parental status, disability, veteran status, or other class protected by applicable law. We believe that a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills will better service the diverse community of collectors we support.

If you require an accommodation to apply or interview with us due to a disability or special need, please email View email address on click.appcast.io.

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For New York Residents: In connection with hiring, Collectors Universe, Inc. uses an automated employment decision tool (Brighthire) to assist in evaluating candidates. Collectors Universe, Inc. began using this tool in September 20